Unlimited Continues
by Supersilver46
Summary: What was supposed to be a normal day playing a new video game, soon turns into a deadly trap...
1. Chapter 1

To be honest I wasn't exactly expecting my first kill to be this easy. From what they showed in the movies, you'd expect your first kill to be a struggle, something that'd haunt you for the rest of your life. But for me, I didn't exactly feel that way, instead I felt...relieved. Maybe it was because all it had taken was one lucky hit to a major artery, leaving the man twitching on the ground as he clutched his neck, the only sounds he could make were gurgles as blood spewed from his mouth and stained the white pristine floor red. Maybe it was because no one had stumbled into the fitting room by now, but it wasn't like it would stay that way forever. I shakily pulled the knife out from his neck, and jumped back to avoid the spray of blood that spewed from his neck and splattered against the wooden door. I wiped the blood off the knife with the man's jeans, being careful not to get the blood on my clothes, and took out a camera from my bag. I snapped a few photos of the chilling corpse of the man, and stuck the camera and the photos into my bag, I'd have to get those developed later.

Slowly, I open the door of the dressing room, and look down the hall to the left, and thankfully no one was there, looked to my right and saw the same thing. I fully stepped out of the dressing room and gently close the door behind me, locking it in place before heading out of the fitting room. A blonde lady wearing a red blouse and tan slacks idly blew a huge pink bubble before it popped, still chewing her gum she turned to look at me, "So did you find everything you needed?" She lazily asks as she pays more attention to the magazine in her hand than you. "You took a really long time sweetheart."

"Everything went well," I said, keeping my voice as low and scratchy as I could keep it. "Thank you for asking." I quickly try to push my way past the receptionist's desk but the receptionist steps around her desk and blocks my way forward. She has a pleasant smile on her face, one that doesn't quiet reach her eyes.

"You didn't take so long for any other reason, right?" She asks as she takes a step forward, causing you to take a step back. "You weren't doing anything... _wrong,_ were you?"

"That depends on what you think is, ' _wrong'_ m'am." I say calmly, but inside I'm freaking out. Alarm bells are ringing in my mind and I can't help but curse myself for not paying closer attention to the woman. I don't know who she is, but I know that there's something wrong with her. "I haven't broken any of the store's laws, so could you please move."

"Well there _is_ something you did wrong, I think you know exactly what you did." Her smile gets even wider, reaching all the way to the sides of her head. "Haven't you learned right from wrong little girl?"

"I think someone should teach you some _manners."_

To be honest, there were a lot of things I had done wrong this night. I'd taken too long to track down my target, even though I'd managed to take them out with little to no problem, I hadn't found a better route to leave, and I didn't prepare for the roundhouse-kick to my chest that sent me flying through the wall. The number one thing I had done wrong was thinking that I would be the only one to go after the target I had chosen, especially with the price on their head. I puushed myself to my knees only to freeze as the cold tip of metal pressed against my forehead, as I looked up I saw the woman from before holding a pistol to my head.

"It looks like I win," The woman winked as she pressed her finger down on the trigger of the gun, "Better luck next time!"

And then everything went dark as I was shot...

Damn...

Damn...

"Damn it!" I shouted as I leaned back in my chair, I tossed the helmet I had been wearing on my bed and wiped the sweat off my forehead. My cat perked his head up from his resting spot on my windowsill before settling back down, seeing that the danger had passed. Damn it, there went four hours of my life, and to get so far only to get cheapshoted by some jerk who had too much time on her hands. I sighed, now what was I supposed to do, it'd be a week until the next target was placed into the game, and there'd undoubtedly be a bloodbath at trying to get the rewards from killing them.

*Zzzt*

*Zzzt*

*Zz-*

"Hello?"

"Hahaha, did you see the look on your face?!" the person on the other end of the call laughed even harder, "It was so priceless!"

"Yeah, haha, very funny Ginny," I said as I rolled my eyes and booted up the computer in my room, "So how long were you waiting at that store for?"

"Eh, a few hours ago," Ginny said, "I thought it'd be easy to just kill the target, but then it'd be much more fun to watch you all kill each other trying to get to him."

"And then you went up and scavenged all the loot, didn't you?" The computer finally started up and I quickly logged into my account. While I waited for the computer to log me into my account, I continued to talk to Ginny, "You really are ruthless, you know that?"

"I think Ron's going to go mental once he finds out," Ginny says, "He's stayed up all night for the event, I can hear him shouting upstairs right as we speak."

"Yeah..." The computer finally logs me in and I open up my usual browser,I quickly type into the search bar and hit the enter button, "So what are you going to do with the prize, are you going to share it with Ron?"

"Actually I was thinking about sharing it with Harry," Ginny said, "He's been waiting for it for a long time, and you know his aunt and uncle won't buy it for him."

"But they will for that tub of lard, I'm pretty sure he needs more exercise time than time to play video games," You say as the site finally loaded up, comments rapidly scrolled across the screen as a timer counted down from forty eight hours, "Wow have you seen the comments, people are losing their minds over this!"

"Well it is a game that most people have been looking forward to for a while now," Ginny says before responding to someone, probably Ron, and continuing the conversation, "Sorry Hermione I've got to go, see you in forty-eight hours?"

"See you in forty-eight hours!" Ginny hangs up, and you put your cellphone away, In forty-eight hours you were going to play what would possibly be the best VRMMORPG ever!


	2. Chapter 2

Forty-eight hours later and I finally got my hands on a physical copy of Sword Art Online, hooray for me! It'd wiped out most of the money I had saved up from past birthday gifts from my parents, but I feel as though it was worth it. This game was the highly anticipated product created by Kayaba Akihiko, one of the greatest video game designers of all time and his game had already been flying off store shelves. I'd been lucky enough to snag a preorder, and so had Ron after he "borrowed" some money from Percy. I looked at the clock at my room, it was about 8 in the morning over here, and about four over in Japan, which meant that the launch for the game had finally started.

I placed the Nervegear, a VR helmet that was also created by Kayaba Akihiko, over my head as it did the usual start up procedure. I then calibrated the device by touching parts of my body, basically my arms, legs, chest, etc. Lying on my bed I called out,

"Link start!"

A flash of white and multicolored lights later I ended up in a blank room with a large mirror.

"Hello, player!" a disembodied voice, "Welcome to Sword Art online, before we begin, would you like to customize your appearance?"

Two large screens popped into existence in front of me, with the words 'YES' and 'NO' written in large blocky letters. I shrugged and changed my avatar to the one I used in other games, I gave myself a thick hood, shrunk down my height, fixed my teeth, and then I was done.

"Are you sure you want to save these changes?"

I hit 'YES' again and was teleported into what looked like a town square that seemed as though it jumped out of medieval times with the cobbled roads, old fashioned stands, and slightly worn-down walls of other homes. Other players had already teleported in ahead of me and were talking among themselves or just exploring the town. I opened a menu and found that the others had already started up a private chat, I quickly joined in with them.

QuidditchMan: So, is everyone here yet?

Guywiththeglasses: Yeah, I just got in, I'm in the starting town, where are you guys?

BookWorm: I'm in the starting town too, I'm kind of surprised at how real everything looks here.

Guinevere: Well Kayaba usually pays attention to detail, so I'm not too surprised.

QuidditchMan: Okay, so if we're all done praising the guy.

QuidditchMan: How about we take on our first quest?

Guywiththeglasses: Are you sure we're ready for a quest yet, we don't really know how to use the mechanics.

QuidditchMan: Oh come on, how hard could it be?

QuidditchMan: Besides I found us an easy fetch quest, we'll get pretty good exp if we do this one.

QudditchMan: Plus, we'll be up against the equivalent of slimes, I bet I could take it out in one hit.

BookWorm: How much would you like to bet on that?

Guinevere: How about the 30 pounds I saw you get from mom?

Guinevere: If you win, I'll do chores for you for a month.

QudditchMan: Sure thing, get ready to do chores for a month!

.

"Gah!" A large man in red armor was sent flying back and hit the ground hard, dust billowed around him and the broadsword he had held in his grasp skittered to the ground.

"Well I guess you owe us those thirty pounds Ron," A tall woman dressed in orange armor as she watched Ron pull himself to his feet.

"Well you could've helped Ginny!" Ron rounded on his sister before turning to face you and a man in green lying against a wall. "And how about you two, you were just watching the entire time!"

"I would have helped, but I thought it would've been better to let you prove yourself," the man in green armor said, "But I didn't expect you to lose to a pig of all things."

"Seriously Harry, can't you help me?!"

Said pig, or rather its head, happily bounced up and down on the ground, behind it laid our objective for the quest that Ron had gotten for us. The NPC who had given out the quest had apparently lost their teddy bear when they were playing in the cave we were currently in and had wanted to get it back before their parents found out they were somewhere they weren't supposed to be. Of course, monsters had recently infested the cave and so it was up to us to clear it out and get the stuffed toy.

It was a pretty simple fetch quest; the problem is that we'd been in the cave for about an hour watching Ron trying (and failing) to beat the pig. But every time he swung his sword he only managed to barely dent its health, right now its health had gone into the yellow, but Ron's health had also been chipped away at as well. Currently the two were at a stalemate, with Ron glowering at the pig head with such menace I couldn't help but chuckle at the sheer ridiculousness of the whole situation.

"Oh, it looks like you were the ones who got that quest," A voice spoke up from the entrance of the cave. We turned to look to see a tall man wearing a grey cloak walk into the cave, a small smile was on his face. He then turned to look at Ron, "You guys are new, so you don't really know how to use the system right, that's why you're having so much trouble with the pig."

Ron looked at the man in confusion, "What do you mean using the system wrong, all I have to do is hit it right?"

The man shook his head, "Sure you could do it like that, but it'd take you forever to kill something." he said. "What you really need to do is this..."

The man pulled out a dagger and held it behind him, his focus completely on the pig. Then his blade began to glow and with a quick thrust of his dagger a wave of energy struck the pig, causing it to vanish in a flash of blue pixels. The man sheepishly rubbed the back of his head as he looked at all of you, "Looks like I overdid it a bit..."

"That was awesome!" Ron shouted as he looked at the man with admiration, "How'd you do something like that?"

"Well basically..."

The man, who introduced himself as Cedric, went into detail about initial motion and Skills, apparently to maximize your chances at actually hitting something, you would need to perform the initial motion correctly and activate one of your Skills at the same time, which would lead to you to gain the upper hand in combat.

"So, you'd do it like this..." Ron performed the same movements that Cedric had done moments prior, and his sword began to glow. With a loud shout he sliced through the air and a wave of energy cut through the wall and hit the rocky surface of the cave walls, cutting a deep impression through it. "Hey, I did it!"

Cedric smiled, "Congrats on using your first sword skill," he said, "You should probably get back to town now, the other beta testers'll probably try to grab it from you and get the exp for themselves."

"You're a beta tester?" I asked Cedric, though when I thought about it, it kind of made sense. He knew a bit too much to be a new player.

Cedric nodded, "Yeah I was lucky enough to get chosen, I know most things about this game like the back of my hand," he said. "So, if you need any help you can ask me, here I'll add you guys to my contacts."

After thanking him we left the cave and headed back to the town we had started in. Ron led us to where he had gotten the quest from the NPC and handed it the teddy bear, which ended the quest and gave us each 100 exp. Then the three of you went to the town square and sat down near a few trees,

"Well that was fun, right guys?" Ron asked.

"Yeah it was fun, though anything's better than having to deal with Dudley," Harry said. "He's apparently decided to take up orchestra."

Ron winced in sympathy. "That seems like a disaster waiting to happen."

Ginny smirked, "Is he any good?"

"Hell no, it sounds like he's strangling a cat!"

"That sounds like it sucks," I said, "I'm going to guess your aunt and uncle are still acting like he's a gift from God or something?"

"Actually, I'm pretty sure Vernon's planning on smashing Dudley's violin when he isn't looking," Harry said. "He's that bad."

Ron stood up and stretched, "Well it's almost time for us to leave, Dad's apparently bringing us to a car museum."

Ginny stood up as well, "Yeah, we'll see you guys later!"

They then opened their menus and Ron frowned, "Wait where's the login button?"

"I think it should be near the bottom," Harry said as he pulled up his own menu, only to frown a few moments later. "That's weird I don't see it either."

I opened my own menu and found that I couldn't find the logout button either.

"Maybe it's a glitch?" Ginny said as she swiped through multiple menus, "It is launch day so maybe there are a few kinks they haven't worked out yet?"

 _We didn't we really think much of it back then, but maybe that was because we wanted something to blame for the logout button suddenly disappearing. It made perfect sense to think that it was just a bug, it was launch day after all, so bugs were to be expected. But in the end, it turned out to be much sinister than that, and there was no way we could have known what was going to happen next._

"Hey guys the sky..." Ron pointed up to the sky, which rapidly became filled with hexagonal red caution messages. Then what looked like blood began to drip through the cracks between the hexagons, and pooled in the sky to form a gigantic figure in a robe.

 _We would have never known that today would mark the end of our normal lives..._


End file.
